Letter: Other sides of American history

A perceptive Jan. 29 letter from Juliana Hackman puts to rest the sniping about Benghazi. She was succinct about the delay in Syria that has yielded positive results.

Indeed, George W. Bush put the U.S. in deficit with the Iraq war costing at least $1 trillion and possibly $2 trillion.

But wait, he had the approval of Congress in October 2002 to plan the invasion. I am proud that our fine senator, Dick Durbin, voted against that resolution.

As for Vietnam, I believe that the figure is 58,000 deaths of our military. Sure, the Tonkin Gulf incident was a smokescreen, but today’s young people have no idea of the hold that anti-Communism had in the 1950s and 60s.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower put 50 military advisers in Vietnam in 1959, followed by another 50, leaving John F. Kennedy to deal with it.

I supported our mission in South Vietnam until that unnamed general said that “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.”